The following is a portion of the introduction to Karvsnitt: Carving, Pattern and Color in the Slöjd Tradition.
Cutting patterns is a natural part of working wood with hand tools. For centuries, patterns and symbols have decorated simple tools and utensils. During long winter nights in front of the fire, symbolic patterns were carved into the wood. And with the tip of a sheath knife, a signature or house mark was added next to the year — a couple of slanted notches that have immortalized the object for posterity, a plowed furrow in the soil of time. Today, these objects glitter like treasure in museum archives and provide inspiration for those who want to develop a creative and authentic practice of pattern-carving in wood.
To me, contemplating what pattern to cut on an object — on a box, spoon or knife handle — feels like I’m being served dessert. I want to enjoy the process, allow the sketching time it needs to create a unique and ideal pattern: a decoration that I can cut at my leisure, safe in the knowledge that it will stand the test of time for many years to come. This is the feeling and experience I want to share with you. A big advantage of cutting patterns is that you don’t need many tools; a chip carving knife and a regular well-sharpened sheath knife will go a long way. Basic slöjd tools are needed to make the objects themselves, of course. But once this is done, you can bring your chip carving knife anywhere. Once you begin to familiarize yourself with techniques such as the fingernail cut, shallow relief carving and kolrosing, you’ll need to supplement your tools with a few gouges and a kolrosing knife. You may also need to fasten the material to a workbench or table with clamps to free up both hands.
There is great variety and freedom of choice in composing your own designs. Think of this book as a primer on technique, a source of inspiration and an invitation to create your own bank of patterns as well as your own unique style.
It contains many pictures of newly composed patterns and objects made and crafted specifically for this book. There are also pictures of older examples from folk art, captured in museums around Scandinavia. You can also read about cutting patterns in my previous book “Slöjd in Wood” (Lost Art Press, 2018), under the chapter on chip carving. This book offers a wider range of in-depth pattern ideas, additional inspiration, and suggestions on how to make various everyday objects the slöjd way.
You can read and use this book independently of “Slöjd in Wood,” though I occasionally refer to technical descriptions found in the previous title.
ROOTED IN A FOLK TRADITION OF PATTERNS
My journey as a woodworker began when my father put a chopping block in my childhood bedroom. Along the way, as I have adopted new techniques and materials, these experiences have been com-pounded into a knowledge that has shaped a special slöjd-inspired approach to my materials, tools and folk art. It has resulted in a practice that has gradually come to encompass work processes as well as cultural history in a never-ending exploration that is constantly growing both deeper and broader. Slöjd has become part of my profession, a kind of artistic vocation or a so-called métier. Traditionally, this has been common in many professions that involve working with one’s hands but has rarely been documented by the practitioners themselves, who are preoccupied with their work. Herein, I have gathered all my experience of cutting patterns in wood, and with this book I wish to pass it on to you.
My woodworking is marked by a quest to strike the perfect balance between opposites such as shallow and deep, burlesque and serious, as well as classical and folksy. Drawing inspiration from older slöjd, this has always been a stated aspiration in my work. When I admire traditional patterns, I’m often struck by all that the term “traditional” holds. It’s a loaded, heavy and somewhat boring word, often evoking preconceived conservative images imprinted on us by museums and history books. Yet for me, the opposite is true. Every time I return to the archives — as I like to call the thousands of pictures and drawings of old slöjd and patterns I have collected over the years — I am struck by a tremendous desire to work wood with my hands. When I study the patterns, I see the folk geometry, the rhythm, all the personal mannerisms and local variations. I feel like I become part of a long tradition of folk-art souls making slöjd. These explorations give me a deeper understanding of the conditions that governed how folk art was made, both the living conditions of the slöjd maker and the materials and tools that were used.
The choices and limitations — why a certain pattern has been carved — are influenced by the time in which the slöjd maker lives. Often, I see a personal and artistic style that offers a great freedom, which in my view approaches a folk-art definition of what slöjd is. To me, slöjd and folk art offer the freedom to express beauty, contradiction, naive delight and deep seriousness in my own unique way. I can’t wait to try out variations on what I have just seen. In slöjd, I get to explore new ways of expressing a different aspect of my personal style through sketching, drawing, reshaping and finally cutting the pattern. Together with the joy of having made a new object, to me the creative process is the greatest satisfaction in slöjd
Jesus in medieval manuscripts.
WHAT’S THE POINT OF CUTTING PATTERNS?
One of my earliest vivid memories of pattern-carving is from a visit to the Norsk Folkemuseum in Oslo in the early 1980s. The exhibition space is dark; only the light from the display cases illuminates the room. Some guksis (wooden cups)and burl bowls from the 17th century catch my interest. I try to take a picture, but suspecting it’s too dark, I take out my sketchpad instead and begin to draw the shapes and patterns from the outside of the bowl. I struggle to define which parts of the carved surface are raised and which are recessed. After staring and thinking, sketching and erasing for quite some time, the pattern finally emerges with greater clarity — as though I were developing a photograph in an analog darkroom. Shading with a pencil, I create depth and angles. How can I accentuate shallow and flat surfaces in relation to deep cuts?
By the time I have been sketching for an hour, I’m exhausted and my fingers are itching for a piece of wood and a knife; I want to have a go at cutting the pattern myself. Someone is speaking to me from behind the carved figures. The woodworker is inviting me to do the same: “Try it yourself! Put your knife to the wood and the rest will take care of itself.”